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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25924072">An Honest Man</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/shotgunsinlace/pseuds/astramaxima'>astramaxima (shotgunsinlace)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Homeland [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Backstory, Badass Agent Stone (Sonic the Hedgehog 2020), Character Study, Child Neglect, Dancing Around the Concept of Mythology, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exploring the Concept of Identity, Gen, Hero Worship, M/M, One (1) Display of Physical Affection, Pre-Slash, Rated for Language: One (1) "fuck" is Said, a tad bit of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:09:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,266</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25924072</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/shotgunsinlace/pseuds/astramaxima</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people march through life with bright lights guiding their every step, leading them up the ladder of success and self-discovery. </p><p> <i>Stone isn't one of those people.</i></p><p>Sometimes, life allows for an unspeakable force to pluck a despondent soul from the confines of a cage and set him on a path only meant for him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik &amp; Agent Stone, Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Homeland [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881388</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>An Honest Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <i>Two thousand years, I've been in that water</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Two thousand years, sunk like a stone</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Desperately reaching for nets that the fishermen have thrown</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Trying to find, a little bit of hope</i>
  <br/>
</p><dd>— We Don't Eat, James Vincent McMorrow</dd>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Difficult actions ease with practice, like a rock smoothing out to the cadence of a constant drip. Likewise, the fear of the unknown erodes after the first near-death experience—<i>falling into a pool while unsupervised at the age of four</i>—becoming staler as the flow of time proceeds unencumbered by one’s successes—<i>high school graduation, best marks in the state</i>—and failures—<i>a car crash and a funeral, keys never removed from the ignition</i>.</p><p>Difficult actions ease with practice, like leather gloves loosening along their seams the more frequently the trigger is pulled. Likewise, fear of an unmerciful afterlife at the hands of one’s sin—<i>shooting deer for sport out in the wilderness at the age of fourteen</i>—becomes irrelevant throughout the natural progression of survival—<i>one man, two men, three men dead; he signed his name at eighteen because there was nothing more to do</i>—and a lack of self-identity—<i>‘First to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean.’</i></p><p>The weight of being the best of the best during the age of maturity is not unlike the crown of a gifted child: disproportionate to the head that carries it, meant to be hung by Ptolemy amidst every other constellation for the trauma of being abandoned by those who love him. By parents who deemed him a child-too-many, by foster families who deemed him too reserved, by teachers who frowned upon the genius stored within features too foreign for their intolerant tastes, by Dana Southmoore in freshman year, by Richard Ramirez in bootcamp. <i>Uneasy is the head…</i> And by now, a small army of his own headpieces hangs beside Ariadne’s proof ascendance.</p><p>The weight of being the best of the best no longer crushes the chest with hands now washed free of blood, each clip emptied carries the name of the system who has placed him there emblazoned on every individual bullet. Most days he wonders if the empty chamber of his weapon resonates with him more honestly than when fully loaded. Most days he does not think at all, simply slips through the notions of humanity and the expected façade of amicability.</p><p>He often wonders where life would have taken him if he had been the first child to immigrant parents, and if they tried again years after they had given him up. He wishes them good health and wealth whenever they cross his thoughts, mostly when he is abroad and sauntering down death’s hallway with high-tech gadgets of mass destruction strapped beneath the sharp silhouette of his suit. Minuscule wisps of wind whisper that he could search for them, now, weeks shy of forty under the water bearer’s sign. They could be dead. They might not be. There is no knowing, and he already dances with one too many unknowns in his line of duty.</p><p>He thinks, too, of the kind yet misguided hearts that took him in all throughout his childhood. Those people who looked down at the wide-eyed runt whose social workers would only ever describe as well-behaved, always omitting his proneness to wandering off and getting himself lost. The first time it happened, no one came looking for him. The second time, he was placed back into the system. A new family came with bullies who hid their things and blamed it on him. The fourth one refused to give up their dogs to abide by the state’s home safety regulation, and so he was removed.</p><p>By the time he enlisted in the military, he had never been formally adopted.</p><p>By the time he signed on the dotted line, the recruitment officer herself told him to not worry about getting his name right. Names are only as permanent as the person themself.</p><p>The only time he truly ever felt wanted was when the Air Force faced off with the USMC after his testing results came back with scores unheard of. He was promised the world—engineering, aviation, a chance to go to space if budgeting allowed it—but in the end it was the promise of a stable job, an honest one, that won him over. His world held no room for goals beyond where to lay his head and how to prevent hunger pains.</p><p>The day he became a Marine, his dog tags carried a new name and a new series of numbers, his blood type, and gas mask size. Finally, an identity of his own. No religion was listed.</p><p>His C.O. eventually shoved him through college with the threat that nowadays no one would hire a soldier without a degree, and so he majored in aerospace engineering and minored in Middle Eastern linguistics with the vague hope of somehow finding fertile soil to plant his withered roots in. Unsurprisingly, the cup remained dry.</p><p>There is strength to be gained by commuting with solitude, the mold broken and remade into the semblance of what one needs.</p><p>Those who surrounded him filled a void only fleetingly—colleagues, classmates, mentors, the occasional lover. The kindly old lady two apartments down who offered him a hot meal every so often and left him her cookbook upon her passing. The yellowed pages smelled of cigarette smoke and dead flowers, so he saw no other choice but to memorize it as quickly as possible before leaving it to rot away in the small stack of books he dared to call his own. They came with him wherever he moved, even when he could recite Hoda Barakat’s <i>Disciples of Passion</i> from the cavities of his heart and cook the hardiest shrimp gumbo this side of the Mississippi.</p><p>Even with a postgraduate degree and an impressive military resume, the glass doors kept slamming shut. He knew why. Knew the ins and outs of the hate that followed him like a bad stench, and by the age of thirty, he was too jaded to put up a fight.</p><p>By thirty three, the person he thought could be his one true anchor to the world left him crucified to the dingy walls of a rundown apartment. Lease broken and the bill now his to foot. It wasn’t the first time he was forced to choose between rent and a payment to the ever benevolent blessing the military had provided for schooling. By this point he had learned that hunger pains only strengthened one’s sense of will.</p><p>A clandestine job offer drifted down to him not a week later.</p><p>Two years later and he stood before a jury as they discussed his sentence. No opportunity of parole despite good behavior, not when everyone looked at him as if he were a Shaitan come to deliver death and destruction. </p><p>Three days before his execution an even fiercer devil sauntered into the lifeless hell that was his cell, warping the very air around him with the smell of sparked fire and sacred oil.</p><p><i>The thing about assassins for hire, you see,</i> that devil had said, twirling the end of his mustache like the villain he was, <i>is that they only thrive when sanctioned by that gold ol’ bull at the top of the pyramid.</i></p><p>When he asked <i>what do you want from me</i>, the devil bared his shiny teeth. <i>Only your loyalty, young man.</i></p><p>He never knew he could be loyal.</p><p>Discarded all his life, turned away, shunned, a nuisance, an eyesore, unloved—he never thought he would be able to comprehend the concept of loyalty as easily as he did. It blindsided him, filled him with new life the moment he was given a standard issue suit and a handgun the moment he signed it away for a second time. For the government, he was told, but he knew better the moment he first witnessed the man who bought his freedom bring the Secretary of Defense to his very knees in front of every man and woman worth their salt.</p><p>Tall and lean, consuming a room’s attention like a black hole.</p><p>All sharp edges and impeccable presentation outlining honesty so brutal it bordered cruelty.</p><p>He had never met a person so cutthroat, so volatile, so unapologetically themselves that all he could do was seethe with envy that flirted with hatred. Hands at his back, standing at attention, he saw this man as nothing more than another military asshole with a stick so far up his ass it probably scrambled that infamously big brain of his.</p><p>But then, he saw it.</p><p>He had never seen fire burn so brightly.</p><p>The man’s prowess, his genius, his abandon towards his own twisted pleasures that those above and below him feared. <i>A lab rat with teeth.</i> Not just a scientist, not just a genius—but a madman with dangerous toys of his own making. Revered, feared, respected. Loathed, scorned, and kicked because they could not control him, not if they wanted what he could give for a hefty sum.</p><p>It soon became clear what his role in this game was: crush the opposition, snipe those who interfere, protect the asset.</p><p>The stint as a hitman that landed him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list also landed him the job of a lifetime. Handsomely paid, fantastic benefits—no identity. For the second time in his thirty five years of life, he is rendered nameless. Merely a specter allowed to come and go as he pleases so long as he does his job, as long as he kills on command and without question, and files the occasional report afterwards.</p><p>An easy job. A perfect one for someone like him: a man with no name, no country, no ties to the living realm aside from a government contract.</p><p>But there is something to be said about kindred spirits. The lonely call to the lonely, the abandoned seek refuge in those who have never had a home.</p><p>Like two lost boys running amuck in a derelict orphanage under the colorful flood of stained-glass windows and splintered pews.</p><p>It took a year before a small piece of stiff, leather-like material the shape of a card was slid towards him over the cluttered surface of a metal table. Unassuming despite the intricate design at its center that glowed neon red. On it was his real birthday, a stylized barcode he had seen on various impossible machines, and a brand new assortment of letters he had never seen before.</p><p>
  <i>And I name thee—</i>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>___________________________________</p>
</div>“Agent Stone. You’re late,” Robotnik says by way of greeting, leaning forward on his hands propped on the workbench, squinting at schematics on a holographic screen. “I started to think you forgot where you work.”<p>“Things got a little hairy when someone tried shooting down the transport carrier I was on,” Stone says with a small laugh as he enters the mobile lab, two coffee cups in hand. “Brought a latte as a peace offering.” Robotnik reaches out without looking, and the cup is dutifully slotted into his gloved hand. “Full report is ready for your eyes, and so is the, uh, watered down version for the brass.”</p><p>“Excellent work as always.”</p><p>Stone beams at him, standing off to the side before turning his attention to the latest project in pre-production. He doesn’t comment on it, simply takes it in while he waits for the usual add-ons to the day’s already busy schedule. “Aircraft. It’s been a while.”</p><p>Robotnik straightens up, turning to Stone with steely eyes and a mild sneer. “What’s this I hear? Is that… a condescending remark?”</p><p>“Not at all, Doctor. I was just—”</p><p>“No, no, don’t hold back on <i>my</i> behalf, Stone, you’re the one with the engineering degree and not at all me. Tell me what you really think of my 'boring' and 'flawed' design.”</p><p>Prying his eyes away from Robotnik with a barely concealed smile, he boldly steps towards the workbench. He reaches up, moving the three dimensional model every which way. “Propulsion wise…” he starts, before catching the subtle yet intentional blank space on the schematic, “oh. Never mind.”</p><p>“I thought so.”</p><p>He continues his inspection knowing full well the design is as perfect as Robotnik would claim it to be. Everything always is at least until it makes it to the testing stage, where only one percent of his creations present some sort of blemish in their code. “It’s amazing. I’m surprised you haven’t started on it yet.”</p><p>Robotnik rubs the bridge of his nose. “Walters wanted a fresh pair of eyes before I greenlight it since, according to him, it’s too expensive to fuck up.” He clears his throat, loudly, before fixing Stone with a side-eye. “Figured if I had to, I’d wait to show it off to our regional aeronautics expert.”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“My uncle. <i>You</i>, you absolutely dense cloud.”</p><p>Stone shakes his head, that familiar warmth settling deep in his chest. “I’m just an agent, Doctor.”</p><p>“I disagree, but whatever lets you sleep at night.” He takes his first drink of the day, humming appreciatively when that first drop of hot coffee touches his tongue. Robotnik leans back against the opposite table, cradling the cup as if it were something precious. “Your barista skills remain unparalleled.”</p><p>“Glad to hear it.”</p><p>They lapse into a comfortable silence only decorated by the low hum of machinery, a dozen or so diagnostic programs running in the background while nested drones charge up. The temperature is a little below the acceptable baseline, meaning the doctor has been putting his elbows into more physical projects, likely pulling all-nighters by the pronounced shadows under his eyes.</p><p>Stone wants to ask if he’s eaten, drank any water, if he’s even slept. He wants to know if he’s sat down at all in the past week, if his eyes have graced anything other than the current surroundings, if his hands have held anything other than a tool. Has he spoken to anyone? Thought of anything other than the grind of what needs to be done in a time crunch? </p><p>Has he, for the first time in a very long time, feared for his life?</p><p>“Stone?”</p><p>The agent blinks up, having zoned out staring at the lid of his own drink. “Sorry. Just tired,” he declares, and in doing so allowing the feeling to truly manifest itself since the end of his mission. </p><p>He’s used to having Robotnik alongside him while outside the lab, either for reconnaissance or interception, the dispersing of coups, the enforcement of US law on foreign soil. But every so often a job requires a sort of finesse and discretion only he can accomplish, unimpeded by overly-loud and overzealous geniuses.</p><p>His psych-eval states he suffers from separation anxiety, among a myriad of other issues he rather not dwell on but considers to be part of his everyday life. Robotnik is his charge, after all. His task, his top priority. For a lifetime Stone searched for a sorry excuse to keep on living, and now he’s found it. Or it found him, rather.</p><p>His loyalty for freedom. A fair exchange. An easy one.</p><p>A job perfectly tailored to his skillset, both innate and learned.</p><p>Give a boy who has never owned anything in his life something, anything, and he will guard it with his life. Keep it safe under his pillow, in his pocket, within the cavity of his chest, close to his heart.</p><p>Robotnik may not have been given to him, but Robotnik searched for him and found him. Singled him out and went ‘him, I want him’. And what had begun as a terse understanding of mutual benefit with hateful undertones became… whatever this is.</p><p>Something complex. Acknowledged but unspoken.</p><p>Gentle, when it wants to be.</p><p>Setting his untouched cup on the table, Stone closes the space between them without meeting Robotnik’s eyes. As if sensing what’s coming, the doctor sets his own drink aside, letting out a small ‘oof’ when Stone collapses against him with a bone-deep sigh.</p><p>Face pressed to the smooth fabric of Robotnik’s shirt, Stone fills his lungs with that faint scent of sandalwood and lemon mixed with coffee and machinery. He is lean but he is soft, warm, alive, and breathing. Despite the jagged edges and vicious cliffs, Robotnik is alive as his chest rises and falls beneath Stone’s head. Despite their nature and cavernous divide, Stone worships the man with holy affirmation for many a reason: their differences and similarities, the ease which they connect with, always on the same wavelength while being polar opposites on most aspects of their personal life.</p><p>He worships and the lab is their temple.</p><p>Robotnik, his home.</p><p>The hand that tentatively presses to his back lingers there in silent approval, telling Stone that it is okay to lean on his doctor when his legs can carry him no more.</p><p>Surrender is not weakness when offered to he who has vowed to protect, and Stone can no longer differentiate who between them is the sanctuary. Stone is the man on the ground, but Robotnik is the eye in the sky. Both formidable forces on their own, together they can bring entire countries to their knees. But it is less about power and more about synchronicity, and Stone can’t help but wonder if Robotnik realizes it.</p><p>Stone’s arms hang limp at his sides, eyes shut as he takes stuttering breaths born out of exhaustion both physical and mental. Lulled by the ambient sounds of the lab, he pushes himself closer to Robotnik, straightening just enough to better slot against his dips and angles with a content sigh, uncaring of the fact that they have never crossed this sort of line. </p><p>Robotnik is touchy by nature, unaware of the extent of which he is, the twitchy habit a subconscious one. Meaningful touches, such as taps on the shoulder or guiding by the elbow, come often enough to not really register in Stone’s senses. But this is different. This is new. Unplanned and unexpected.</p><p>The intimacy of this complete surrender is profound in ways Stone cannot explain, as he is not a writer or a man of philosophy. He is a man of science, much like the one holding him. Merely a lonely boy cradled against the chest of an equally lonely boy.</p><p>“You’re wounded,” Robotnik eventually says, his fingers skimming the edges of bandages underneath his clothing. They move elsewhere and Stone squirms against him, biting back the humiliating reaction to unintentionally getting tickled. “A baboon with a surgical knife could have done a better job at these.”</p><p>“You can tell just by touch?”</p><p>“Of course, I can,” he says without further explanation. “Uneven stitching should be grounds for the immediate revoking of a medical license.”</p><p>“I don’t know… I think keeping my organs on the inside is of higher priority.”</p><p>“Debatable.”</p><p>Stone expels the air from his lungs, allowing his shoulders to loosen fraction by agonizing fraction, sinking deeper into the blissful warmth against his body. With just as much hesitance, he brings up his hands to cleave them to their new mooring points on Robotnik’s back, holding him tight out of some irrational fear that Stone will flake away and shatter like molding clay.</p><p>“Just give me another minute,” Stone says, only partially ashamed by his lack of strength to pull away. After a lifetime of fighting, there is a sweetness to touch he never thought he’d acquire a taste for. Funny, considering Robotnik is anything but. But the doctor allows him the space to exist, refill that empty chamber with an emotion so foreign Stone has yet to find a name for.</p><p>The doctor does not answer him, a hand still on Stone’s back. </p><p>All that breaks the silence is a quiet sip of coffee.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>One day I will write something that is not part of a series. Today is not that day. I'm not at all certain when Agent Stone settled into the cavernous pit of my little heart, but he has and now lives there rent free. I just wanted to write about him getting the rest he deserves and instead I had to go and do THIS. Partially inspired by the song We Don't Eat by James Vincent McMorrow.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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